Getting the deluxe edition of Fall Out Boy’s Folie à Deux for my 14th birthday in ’09 wasn’t what I had planned. The standard version would have been enough, but the deluxe was what I got. And alongside a couple remixes, alternative acoustic versions, and the band’s cover of Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat It’, came ‘Pavlove’ – another new track, left off the album for reasons that no-one apart from those in the band will ever know. Fall Out Boy fans have come to discover the track over the years, begging for it to become widely available through streaming services. It’s one of those times where I’m very grateful for that physical copy I have stored in my bedroom. I feel those fans’ frustration, though.

Really, I don’t think I even appreciated the track fully until maybe about a year later, when the track came up on shuffle in my iTunes library on the computer while I was simultaneously playing FIFA on the TV. That was what I did when there was no one at home when I was a teenager. There’s something about it that sets it apart from the other tracks that made it onto the final album. Those that did have a large, grand production behind them whereas this one seems much less so in comparison. There’s a lot of empty space occurring during the verses where Patrick Stump sings and there’s the sole guitar in the right playing its riff. But that emptiness and the tone of that guitar is something I greatly appreciate. Stump’s vocal delivery isn’t as extravagant here as some of the album cuts, but again that in itself is something I particularly enjoy. There’s no special featured guests, no gang vocals, no lengthy instrumental breakdowns. There’s a piano, some ‘We Will Rock You’-esque stomps and claps and multi-tracked Stump ‘oh-oh’ vocals. But apart from those, it’s a sleek band performance and a song that follows a simple ‘verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus-end’ pattern. Maybe they wanted to develop it more, but couldn’t, and so left it off the album. I don’t know, I’m just throwing out possible answers.

As to what it’s about? The title is a combination of the Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov, who discovered classical condition through his experiments with dogs, and the word ‘love’. But the title doesn’t have anything to do with what’s happening in the song. A case of a few Fall Out Boy song titles. What I theorise is that it’s a track about a cocaine addict. It’s all there in the lyrics. I don’t know about Pete Wentz’s drug habits. Could have sworn I’ve heard a story or two about him dabbling in some substances or others. But what he portrays is a narrator who’s head is blurring and chest is stirring from the cocaine consumption, who knows they could have an early death because of it, but can’t help but get right back to the habit because of the high it gives them. They describe themselves as ‘the invisible man who can’t stop staring at the mirror’. Invisible, cause of the skinniness, and ‘staring at the mirror’, the mirror they snort the lines off. And this narrator wants to make whoever’s in their company ‘as lonely as [them]’ by inviting them to join in. It’s pretty dark. Maybe that’s why it was left off too. Regardless of reasons, I’m all for this track. A deep, deep cut – let’s make it available for the people.